Day Two: Old friends make the best strangers
The room, when Jack finds it, is no where near the bar. In fact, it's up in the air -- stairs that take far too long to climb for the simple goal of lying horizontal for a bit. The decoration matches the rest of this place -- whatever this place is -- decadent to the point of being nauseous
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That isn't Norrington's point, though. Two monarchs stand between them -- Anne and... George? King George? King Billy sounds better and Jack pulls a face for a moment.
The rum sloshes in its bottle as he waits for Norrington to chew Jack's suggestion enough to swallow it. It takes some time and Jack slumps a little in his stance, boredom lurking into the corners of his mind. How did he manage to become friends with this man? Apart from their... violently differing career choices, the man takes too damn long to arrive at an answer.
And when he does, it's abosolutely the wrong one. It sounds like an order and Jack's back straightens automatically, chest broadening in the way he was taught to respond to superiors. It's with a miserable pout that he corrects his stance, backing up to land in a plush chair next to the piano. He tosses the bottle to Norrington, pretending to consider his counter-offer.
"Tell the tale to myself? But I already know it." He gives a sharp smile. "Tell the tale to you... what do you say to a trade? You drink, I drink. You get a question, I get a question. Fair's fair, after all, aye?"
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Well. Now that is something new. Was Sparrow a Navy man before he turned pirate? Apparently so. Or at least, something like. He'd call it a reflex Sparrow was trying to train himself out of, given the miserable look on his face as he collapsed back into the chair, so perhaps not even that long ago.
He nods acceptance to Sparrow's words. After all, that would seem to be the easiest way to find out where precisely the pirate was coming from. 'Indeed,' he agrees wryly, 'fairness being something we both strive for.' Sparrow won't understand their shared past that James is referring to, but no matter.
Uncorking the bottle, he takes a generous sip, gritting his teeth slightly against the alcoholic burn and the memories it stirs up. 'So, I get a question,' he reiterates. 'Tell me, then, when did you get that brand?' He nods slightly in its direction. 'It's new, yet.'
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As Norrington drinks, he leans over to the cabinet near by and plucks another bottle for himself, uncorking it and sipping. The sip turns into a few great gulps when he hears the question, surprise throwing his balance with the bottle off and making more rum all the more necessary.
The brand. Jack didn't expect to discuss that. He doesn't particulary want to discuss how he came to be here, either, but at least that he can avoid answering directly. Norrington is meant to be the one supply answers about the past -- Jack's future -- not the other way around.
He wipes his mouth with his wrist, lips pressed against the scar. It still aches on same days, a residual burn within in the skin that Jack can't shake no matter how hard he tries. Consciously lowering his arm, he glares at Norrington.
A deal's a deal, though. So Jack answers, voice grainy from the liquor and nothing else.
"A year or so ago, in November. Why should a Commodore in the Navy want to know the past of a pirate?"
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Sparrow's own question is vague, and James smirks faintly, realising that in this particular situation, he has the upper hand. He knows Sparrow, at least to some degree, while to the pirate, he's a complete stranger, and as off-putting as that is in some respects, in others it's a comfort. James is a man used to being in control, after all, and he's had so little of it over the past two years that any little measure now is something to relish.
'I've had... quite a few dealings with you in the past,' he says, taking another sip. 'And I prefer the truth to mad hearsay.' A vague question deserves a vague answer, after all.
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What difference it makes to him, Jack can't tell, and his reply to Jack's question isn't at all helpful in lending itself for a clue. When Norrington asks him no new question to change the subject, Jack tries it again.
"You now knowing the date, how long have I been a pirate since you met me, the first time?"
The wording of the position is strange but Jack has no other way of asking it.
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It's strange to be thinking such thoughts about Jack Sparrow, regardless of how old he is, and James takes another drink of rum. He's already dealing with enough confusion for one day, he doesn't have the patience to deal with a crisis of morals concerning Jack bloody Sparrow, of all people.
'The first time? Eleven years.' Yes, that'd be it. He met Sparrow on the day of his promotion, and that was in 1712.
But now it's his turn. He meets Sparrow's eyes shrewdly. 'What were you before you turned pirate?'
It's that crisp, military snap to attention that's piqued his interest. James wants to know what makes a man go from something like that to a pirate of Sparrow's kind.
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Though with a ship, hopefully. Not once has Norrington refered to him as "Captain". A chill settles into his bones and he nearly misses the next question volleyed at him.
Norrington has a sharp look to his eye when he asks it, and Jack narrows his own. So Norrington doesn't know, in the -- four or five, it is? Norrington gave his year as 1716 -- years he has known Jack, he never discovered what Jack once was.
Good, then. His answer won't come as a lie. "Nothing," he says to the mouth of the bottle. "I didn't exist." The words are a bit slurred but it's only half due to the alcohol.
Settled in his answer, Jack lurks around for a question. He has one he wants to ask but the possible answer terrifies him. If he never retrieves the Pearl, if he lands as some mangy crew member aboard a no-name ship, taking orders his whole life. He doesn't have the courage to ask that just yet.
Instead, he runs his mind over what he knows of Norrington, how to repay him for that calculating look. William Turner's father ran him through, he said? Odd. But a good place to begin.
He stares coldly at Norrington. "Where did you die, at sea or on land?"
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His lips thin out when Sparrow asks his own question. Of course he'd go for the one thing he knows James would rather not talk about. This question, though, James wouldn't mind answering; if there's anything he's glad of in his death, it's that he had a chance to spit in Davy Jones's face before he died, and that he died at sea. James is a man of the sea, has always been, and it's only proper that that's where he should have died, his body given up to the sea for its final resting place.
He wouldn't mind answering, but he's not going to. At least, not yet. 'Answer for an answer,' he reminds Sparrow. 'Nobody's nothing.'
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He takes another sip of rum and keeps his stare directed at Norrington. There's no other answer Jack can give him, even if Norrington presses. Jack Sparrow, past last November, did not exist.
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He recalls with a brief shiver fighting Barbossa's crew just off the Isla de Muerta, the unreasoning terror of a fighting man confronted with an enemy who will not go down. No throat to slit or blood to spill, a terrible, grinning skeleton who laughs as they fight. James lost many good men that day. It was Sparrow's old crew, he recalls, then captained by Barbossa, and he wonders if Sparrow's been mutinied upon yet.
Sparrow's got a stubborn look on his face, though, staring sullenly at James, and he almost wants to laugh. He is so young.
'At sea,' he says abruptly, answering Sparrow's previous question. 'The only place a sailor should ever die. How did you end up here?'
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There's no such thing, he wants to say, but that can't account for Norrington, who believes himself dead yet sits right in front of Jack. Instead he says, "I never was one for ghost stories" and reclaims his lost sip. "And as to your question: I walked."
That's probably not the answer Norrington wanted but Jack hardly cares. If the man wants to be difficult, Jack could be difficult in return.
So Norrington died at sea, on a ship, and Willaim Turner's father is the one who finished him off. It still didn't make sense but the rum's beginning to lessen Jack's bitterness, allows his curiousity to shine through.
He can think of more interesting questions now. "What's being dead like?"
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He smirks. 'Just you wait,' he says wryly, 'they're your crew. Or were your crew, I suppose.'
He vaguely wonders if it's cheating, telling Sparrow things about his own future (and it's a mark that the rum is perhaps beginning to have an effect that he's now thinking about it as if it was in fact this Sparrow's future). He doesn't really give a toss, but it's a strange thing to think about. That maybe, if Sparrow really is telling the truth and isn't dead, if it'll be different for him when he meets James in his life.
When Sparrow asks him what it's like being dead, he does laugh. Just a rueful little chuckle, shrugging his shoulders. 'Might as well ask what being alive's like. It just is.' He looks down at himself, rubbing his fingers over the palms of his hands. 'I... don't feel any different. Dying, now.' He rolls his shoulders against the shudder that wants to make itself known. 'That felt like something.'
James tips his head back for a long swallow of rum, this time relishing the fire it lights in his belly. He really doesn't feel any different, being dead, and that's a strange thing. Watching Sparrow, he asks the first thing that comes into his head.
'How old are you?'
Because it may only be ten years before James met him, but the man looks about seventeen.
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But Norrington did say he fought the crew of living dead -- Jack's crew. Jack leans forward at that, relief passing through him, surprising him nearly in how encompaassing it is. He still has a crew in the future and that one burst of hope makes the next question startled from his lips before he can think it through. "I get the Pearl back then?"
Because that is the only ship Jack will ever sail. He knows it deep down in his bones. Any crew he has will crew the Black Pearl, fastest ship in the whole of the Caribbean.
He's completely forgotten to answer Norrington's question.
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'You do,' he says, before adding rather archly, 'You commandeer a ship of the fleet in order to get it back, but eventually you do.'
It's at that point that it occurs to him that Sparrow said back. He's already lost his ship, then, mutinied upon by Barbossa and that same crew James will have to fight in ten years' time. Or did fight three years ago. The whole business with time lines is all rather confusing. He cocks an eye at Sparrow, taking another lazy swallow of rum.
'The mutiny's happened then, has it? You've lost your ship?'
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"That must have stung a bit, eh, Commodore? Pirate captaining one of yours." Jack waggles his eyebrows, teasing over something he had yet to do.
But the mirth dries away when Norrington brings up the one thing (of the several things, it seems) that Jack would rather not mention. It's not asked with the same cruelty as before, though, and whether it's the change in tone or the rum, Jack finds himself answering honestly.
Nodding a bit, he drinks from the bottle and stares at the spot on the mattress next to Norrington's hip. "Two days ago," Jack says, voice seeming too loud in the quiet of the room. "Or more, however time works here. They came -- it was night, when they did it because I wouldn't -- Bar --" But he cannot make himself say his name, so he rides over it. "My first mate, he led it. But they all agreed. Unfit captain," Jack quotes with a sneer, and then stops, looks up to find Norrington's eyes.
"Do I kill him?"
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Only two days ago. The pain's fresh, then, an open wound. And, more like than not, that's how Sparrow got here. Marooned on an island, and walked until he ran into the Hotel California. It doesn't make much sense, but then, not much about this place does.
'If it gives you any comfort,' James says coolly, 'yes.'
He knows it will give Sparrow comfort, especially now with the wound so new, the desire for revenge burning in his breast. Somehow, he can't quite bring himself to tell him that Barbossa' brought back to life a year or two after Sparrow kills him. Perhaps later, if this strange amiability turns into something more like what he's used to; he'll keep it for ammunition against Sparrow then. For now, James curiously wants to see that youthful enthusiasm again.
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